


Last Snow

by ninjakins



Category: Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Death, Dragons, F/M, Magic, Paranormal, So much angst, Wills, duels, he wants to live guys, planning for death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 01:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10232939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninjakins/pseuds/ninjakins
Summary: Children of the Ryu clan were taught the conventions and traditions of challenges and duels from a young age. But before they were taught about fighting and power, they were taught about responsibility first. The responsibility to your loved ones, those you, potentially, left behind.And Tatsuya was nothing if not responsible.Like in human duels, most participants were expected to leave letters behind. Letters to family and loved ones, apologizing for not coming home. Which left a letter for Tsubasa.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set the night before the duel in Tatsuya's route. (A one-shot originally written for the Aeon Dream Studio team's Tatsuya giveaway! Finally getting it added here.)
> 
> This is what I get for playing Mystic Destinies and listening to Hamilton on repeat on the same weekend.

He left the letter not under her pillow, but under her laptop.

The party was on it’s last dregs. The living room was a knotty underbush of limbs and haphazardly accepted blankets. Shou had an arm flung out beneath the coffee table, half in Shinji’s face; Emi had somehow claimed the couch but most of her upper half seemed to be slowly melting over the edge. Takumi had been happy to give up his room to Tsubasa and was propped against the loveseat near the door. Not really asleep, Tatsuya suspected, but he was willing to pretend. He knew Taku was offering him privacy.

With as much stealth as he could, Tatsuya closed back up Tsubasa’s schoolbag and slid it back under the couch. The duel was the first thing in the morning, and if she dug through her bag after that, well.

Well.

Children of the Ryu clan were taught the conventions and traditions of challenges and duels from a young age. But before they were taught about fighting and power, they were taught about responsibility first. The responsibility to your loved ones, those you, potentially, left behind.

And Tatsuya was nothing if not responsible.

Like in human duels, most participants were expected to leave letters behind. Letters to family and loved ones, apologizing for not coming home. Tatsuya knew if he failed he wouldn’t be coming home either way—Katsunosuki would either end him (most likely) or worse, but failure would mean losing everything he had devoted himself to. His family, of course, knew why he had to. And, while his mother kept petting his hair down and Sakuko sulked and he caught Yoshi frowning at him like a particularly ill-behaved sketch, they believed in him and believed in each other.

Which left a letter for Tsubasa.

But a letter—simple, fallible strings of words on a page—wasn’t enough. Tatsuya had a bone-deep mistrust and wariness when it came to words, knowing from experience both how words could betray you and fail when you need them the most. Words were the _worst_ kind of magic: powerful, immutable, unreliable.

Ice, however, ice, Tatsuya understood.

So he chose the last magic his life might ever produce.

And Tatsuya chose snow.

It was a tricky, vastly complex and knotty kind of cryokinetic to muster: forming ice when he wouldn’t be present. But Tatsuya worked on it in the scant time he had between training with his grandfather, and with borrowed books from Hikaru and his mother’s help—she was more masterful at long-range spells, after all—he had it: magic ready to take shape, bound up in a little envelop. Probably one of the most complex preparations of magic he’d ever worked. One he never wanted anyone to see.

But it was comforting to imagine it. Tatsuya was always busy—more so since he’d decided his course of action—and busy was good. It kept his mind on his responsibilities, logical steps of action, work to be done. But now and then, over the last couple days, when his grandfather wasn’t helpfully trying to kill him with an ice blade and Ryu formality wasn’t forcing another diplomatic meeting to plan the challenge and his friends—a constellation of allies that had suddenly become endless and dedicated in rather startling ways to Tatsuya—weren’t around, his mind prodded at the thought: _if he lost_.

He didn’t like the thoughts. Begrudged the whole feeling entirely. (As he begrudged most feelings, really.) He wouldn’t lose. But the way the tendril of doubt wiggled through his cracks, it welled up fear and panic with it. The thoughts of crying bothered him the most. His mother’s tears, his siblings loss, but family would always have each other.

Tsubasa’s tears haunted him the most.

He muchly preferred the memories of her smiling. She was so serious, like him, but—god—unlike him she had a symphony of smiles. They were like music. He realized it first, that day, in the rain. When she’d turned her face up towards the sky and closed her eyes as snowflakes—his snowflakes—kissed her eyelashes and cheeks. The most languid, delighted smile growing on her lips.

So he chose snow. If she opened that envelop, if she read the words he promised himself she would never have to read, and if—if then, or much later—she cried, there would be no tears.

There would be snow.

He’d wrap her in one more private snowfall, a thousand flurries, as whispering as ice could ever be, and each flake that traced her skin would be his letter: _I’m sorry. I love you. I always did. I’m sorry._

And hopefully, if he could turn tears into snow, she’d smile again. 


End file.
